


Birds and Bees

by Shiropropaganda



Series: The Fun in Dysfunctional [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, embarrassing parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-25
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2019-05-28 09:40:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15046178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shiropropaganda/pseuds/Shiropropaganda
Summary: AU where Keith is home from college for the first time in two years, Shiro is a neighbor who moved home to recover from an accident, and Krolia gets straight to the point.Alternatively: Krolia totally ruins the mood.





	Birds and Bees

Krolia has always been _observant._

It’s what made her an excellent spy, and now, it’s what makes her an excellent mother. She’s learned from watching what her son needs or wants, and has managed to temper most of her more brutal instincts to the point that her partner only finches away once every few months.

Krolia thinks humans are a particularly oblivious race, but even she has a hard time piecing together when _this_ could have happened.

 

She’s known for a long time that her son harbored a crush on their neighbor, and she doesn’t blame him. He looks much like she imagines his father looked at that age,and the older boy never fails to give Keith the majority of his time whenever he comes home. That kind of attention is bound to give a hormonal boy ideas, but Shiro didn’t seem to notice, and Keith has enough of both his mother’s restraint and his father’s awkwardness to realize that it wasn’t going to happen.

But now, watching across the dinner table, Krolia notices the shift.

Keith’s been away studying, and he’s grown into himself in the two years since his last visit home. He’s still quiet, but he’s confident and his clothes don’t fit him like they used to. It seems that she isn’t the only one who has noticed.

 

Shiro has been welcome in their home from the first day he’d pulled up on his bike, Keith with a black eye clinging to his back. Krolia didn’t even think twice before running out to meet them in the driveway.  

It had been stupid, of course, but Shiro didn’t scream or flinch away from her skin or eyes or teeth. He just looked at her for a long time, and then tugged Keith out from where he was hiding behind Shiro, and then after a beat, pulled a small buddle of fur out of his jacket and placed it in her son’s arms.

The puppy had a broken tail, but didn’t seem to be hurt in any other way. It wriggled and licked Keith’s face and Krolia felt the earth move at the way her son smiled at Shiro. Keith had never been able to relate to a lot of Earth children, she thinks he would have been very popular in a Galaran school-- but never in this lifetime.

 

Now, so many years later, she feels the ground move again as she watches Shiro glance at her son from the corner of his eye, soft smile on his lips.

As much as Keith had changed, living and studying abroad-- Shiro had changed more.  The military says it was his error, that made the plane go down. Krolia doesn’t believe it for a moment--she’s seen brilliant pilots and Shiro, a _human_ , could battle the best of them.

Shiro had been missing for months before a civilian pilot on a joyride found the wreckage. In the end, he’d lost his arm to infection, but his humor remained mostly intact. He was a bit quieter, but no less kind and willing to help her around the house when her partner gets called away to fight fires across state lines. He never lets the loss of his dominant arm slow him down, and Krolia respects him as a warrior.

It is for that reason that they gave Shiro the spare room after he’d been discharged-- from both hospital and military.

Krolia would like to think Keith missed home enough to spend so much money on the flight home for the summer-- it’s what her partner firmly believes, but she knows better. She knows Keith wouldn’t have been able to stand not being able to appraise Shiro himself, to make sure he was solid and real and _alive_.

The way they look at each other is shy.

She figures they have a few weeks to let them grow into their affections.

She’s wrong.

Turns out they have barely 24 hours.

 

In what the humans call “irony” it’s the dog that gives them away.

Krolia hears a playful yip downstairs late one night and then a muffled _oh my god no, go away._

Keith has never been able to deny his pup anything, and Krolia immediately knows something is _wrong_.

She slips downstairs quietly, and reaches the living room in time for the dog to shuffle out, giving her a pathetic whine that she understands to be the canine equivalent of a pout. From inside the room there’s a sound of fabric rustling and then a low sound of pleasure and-- _oh_.

Krolia jumps as something moves behind her-- her partner’s arm as he slaps on the light, and _oh no._

Keith sits up ramrod straight, his tank slipping off one shoulder. His face is passive but he’s still straddling Shiro on the couch, the older man’s pants open and his fingers resting not far from the waistband.

“What in the _hell_ ,” her partner groans, and Krolia is confused by his outburst, “Keith get up.”

Keith looks sheepish and _listens_ , beginning to move, and that confuses Krolia even more.

“No, Keith,” she says firmly, looking at her partner, “why are you angry?”

He looks at her dumbfounded, face red and hands gesturing towards the two.

“Are they not of age of consent?” Krolia asks, and he groans again.

“Of all the things to not get, Krolia, your son is--”

“My son is engaging in a consensual act of pleasure with a partner of his choosing.”

“ _Mom,_ ” Keith’s voice is distressed.

“And that doesn’t bother you?”

 She cocks her head to the side.

 “Should it? They cannot procreate with each other. Shiro has no communicable diseases, it said so in his medical records--”

 “You read his medical records?!”

 “ _MOM._ ”

 “He left them out, should I have not?”

 “Oh my god,” Shiro says.

 Krolia looks over at the couch. Shiro’s hand is covering his face but his skin is flushed, and a vein is throbbing aggressively in Keith’s neck.

 “Is physical intimacy so embarrassing to all of you?” she asks, looking at the mortification on each of their faces, she looks back at her partner.

 “YES,” all three shout in unison, and it’s enough to crack the tension.

 After an awkward conversation about keeping physical acts of consensual pleasure out of shared spaces, Krolia and her partner return to their own room. Once the door closes, he’s doubled over laughing.

 “What?”

 “Well wherever that was going tonight, you certainly killed it.”

 

And that is how, Krolia discovered, she could learn and assimilate to human culture but the thing she hasn’t mastered quite yet, is tact.

**Author's Note:**

> Blame this on twitter.
> 
> Yell at me on tumblr or twitter: @shiropropaganda


End file.
